Free Ballad Beauty by Lauren Linwood Page A

really need to wear one. Your curves are already in all the right places.”
    Humiliated, she stormed back into the hotel, past a confused Mrs. Swenson, and up to the room she’d recently vacated. How dare he talk about her undergarments! She was ready to fire him on the spot.
    Instead, she practiced a few of the choicer epithets from Mulholland’s guidebook under her breath as she removed her clothing. She unlaced the corset and slipped it off, redressing hastily. And then she took a deep breath.
    Freedom.
    She took another. She couldn’t believe how liberating it was. She couldn’t remember ever having worn her clothes without a corset. She felt as comfortable as she did when she stepped into bed every night.
    She scooped up the corset and flew down the stairs, passing Mrs. Swenson on the landing.
    “Miss McShanahan. You can’t carry about your corset in public! Miss McShanahan!”
    She ignored the woman’s outraged cries. She could and would take her corset anywhere she chose. She was a Western woman now, with a mind of her own.
    Her boots clomped down the front steps of the hotel. She didn’t even feel the cold anymore. Instead, she flung the wadded up corset into her guide’s hands and placed a booted foot into the stirrup. On sheer adrenaline, she hoisted herself up into the saddle and smiled down at Noah Daniel Webster.
    “Aren’t you coming?”
    He tossed the corset over his shoulder and remounted Star. She heard him mutter, “Women,” under his breath.
    By two in the afternoon, Jenny McShanahan was hot, cranky, and saddle sore. Noah knew she was because she’d told him so every few minutes for the last two hours. He gritted his teeth for the umpteenth time and tried to ignore her prattle. Obviously, she’d been on her sweetest behavior earlier. Now it was much later, and the real Jenny McShanahan popped out. If he had known what she was really like, he might never have taken on this assignment.
    She was the exact type woman he intended to avoid for the rest of his life. She was a know-it-all, bossy, a complainer, and worse. He glanced over at her and tried to harden his heart to her.
    It was difficult to do. Jenny McShanahan had a simple beauty rarely seen. Her oval face held a beautiful complexion, as flawless as a white rose brushed with a trace of pink. Her neck was as long and graceful as those of swans he’d seen in a book once. He imagined starting at that soft mouth of hers and working his way down her jaw to that slender neck. Lord, he could spend a month of Sundays kissing that neck alone.
    Where in the blazes did these thoughts come from?
    He gave himself a good mental shakedown. Even though he continued to drown out her complaints, he couldn’t totally remove her voice from his head. When she wasn’t squawking away, she had a low, sweet voice, soft-spoken and very articulate. He was definitely attracted to her. What fool wouldn’t be? One look at those deep green eyes and any man he knew would be a goner.
    He repeated to himself for the tenth time that day that Jenny McShanahan was off-limits. She was the daughter of an outlaw, her blood probably as tainted as Sam’s. No way he would get involved with Famous Sam McShan’s daughter, no matter how delicious a curve her small, high breasts made and despite her tempting little waist. She was bad news, and she would hate his guts the minute he arrested her daddy right in front of her. No sense in borrowing trouble.
    Besides, nice girls weren’t for him anyway. He would never settle down. He had Pete’s wanderlust in him, but he’d curbed it by putting it to good use as a Ranger. Very few Rangers married. Any woman who married a Ranger would be filled with a life of disappointment and probable widowhood. No, Noah Daniel Webster was never getting married. Period.
    “If you’ll stop your caterwauling, we’ll pause here and eat us some dinner,” he said pleasantly.
    Her eyes went wide. “I am not caterwauling, Mr. Webster. I am simply